March 11th, 2009 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Platforms: Windows Mobile | 1 Comment »
Today is a big day for Microsoft. The giant from Redmond has finally announced a big part of it's financial plans for their own App Store initiative, which they will release together with Windows Mobile 6.5.
Unsurprisingly, the plans are similar to what the competition is doing. Mobile games and apps can be offered for free, or priced as low as $ 0,99. Microsoft is also giving up 70% of the revenue to the developer. It will potentially also make some revenue available to the operators, but doesn't say if that is before or after the split with the developer.
Microsoft will also introduce a $ 99,- annual service fee plus a fee of $ 99,- per submitted application. For this year though, the first five applications submitted will have no additional charges.
Microsoft will use this charge for support toward the developers as Microsoft will initiate a good certification process to make sure consumers benefit from the best experience possible. To be sure that developers know what's happening, the company will be as open as possible during the process (probably to avoid the unrest that Apple is causing at the moment). Microsoft will also launch a sales and marketing programme to assist developers in monetizing their software.
Cool I’ve got an eyeball on this myself.